GDC Next Reveals ‘Next 10’ Showcase; Inducts Doki-Doki Universe

‘Future of games’ conference GDC Next, taking place in Los Angeles this November, has announced it will be picking ten innovative, yet-to-debut games to make up its ‘GDC Next 10’ showcase. As part of the event’s cutting-edge content, each game’s creator will be invited to give a world-exclusive talk about the concepting, inspiration and design behind the title. Each ‘GDC Next 10’ game has been picked by GDC’s organizers as a game to watch for the future, and a title that is doing something decidedly different in today’s increasingly crowded game market.

The first inductee to the Next 10 is Doki-Doki Universe (trailer below) by HumaNature Studios, and studio founder Greg Johnson (also the veteran creator of Starflight & cult classic Toe Jam & Earl) will be presenting a session that describes how his team dealt with the challenges of developing an emotional, interactive story game.

In Johnson’s talk, titled “Doki-Doki Universe: Sweet, Simple and Genuine,” he will discuss his studio’s design objectives for the anticipated title, which Polygon recently described as “a robot’s journey through humanity… an adventure through a universe full of quirky and quaint stories.”

Johnson will also describe how the developer dealt with some of the challenges that emerged from the game’s complex objectives – ranging from simulating expressive behaviour and conversation, designing emotional and contextual states, handling AI memory and player goals, to the problems with innovating in a sandbox game while also staying on a milestone schedule.

Doki-Doki Universe is set to release worldwide this December on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, PS Vita, and PlayStation Mobile, and GDC Next attendees will get early insight into its unique charms in this exclusive talk. Additional GDC Next 10 inductees will be rolled out over the next few weeks.

GDC Next is the spiritual successor to GDC Online, and will take place alongside the App Developers Conference on November 5th-7th, 2013 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. This new event aims to highlight the future of video game development, with tracks including ‘Next Generation Game Platforms’, ‘Free To Play & New Business Models’, and ‘Smartphone & Tablet Games’, as well as cloud and indie game tracks.

Check out the GDC Next Session Scheduler to see the other announced talks and begin your planning. Previously announced talks include Disney Mobile on level design from hits such as Where’s My Water and Where’s My Perry, Realm of Empires’s Facebook to mobile HTML5 porting, and an inspirational talk from former Edge Magazine editor Ste Curran.